http://www.onlinetvrecorder.com/ offers free TV recordings, and AviDemux can cut out the commercial breaks without requiring recoding. However, many recordings have black bars either on top and bottom or at the left and right side due to the various aspect ratios used, resulting in a 4:3 coded 16:9 movie showing black borders on all four sides in fullscreen mode on a 16:9 monitor (top and bottom because of the movie, left and right because VLC doesn't know they are superflous and that 4:3 has to be fit on the 16:9 screen). Cropping the black bars with AviDemux would require a recoding, so

is it possible instead to let VLC display only the borderless part of the video?

I.e. somehow provide a config file or initially choose a "zoom" section.

Bonus question: I'll award a bounty of 100 rep for any automatic on-the-fly border detection and removal solution, be it VLC or other means.

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Well, I should have checked VLC's Video menu as I did while posting this question... There's the crop to 16:9 option I was looking for... Anyway, if you find an automatic cropping estimation method, the bounty will still be there.

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+1 for posting the solution as an Answer, and also especially for leaving the bounty in tact. – Randolf Richardson Sep 16 '11 at 20:51
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